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My ego convinced me, as he often does. That I must lift too heavy weights. My dumbbell shoulder Press turned into some absurd mix between an incline press and a trapezius tensing all out push fest. Not a pretty sight.... I've had a recurring problem of tensing my neck/trap/jaw during heavy lifts, learning to relax and focus on the muscle that should be doing the lift. Less weight and proper form implemented.

Anyway, I need advice on some good DB/BB excercises for strengthening my upperback, trap and rear delt or what ever muscle helps keep my shoulders back and strong. Even though I had sloppy form, I suspect muscular imbalance as the root cause of my problem as I work out my chest and front delts all the time and my back only gets DB Rows and Pull-ups.

Besides doing pulldowns and chest supported rows, I do two high rep exercises after my upper body workouts to keep the traps and shoulders happy for pressing. The first is band face pulls. You can do them with a cable machine and rope attachment if you don't have any bands, therabands or something similar. I like to either do 4 sets of 25 or 1 set of 100. The other exercise I do it called "IYT's" and it's a three part shoulder raise movement. You do an I, then a Y and the then a T and that is one rep. I do 3 sets of 12 with 5lbs dumbbells. Hope that helps. Video of both below.

If you look at the lables on the right you'll see the muscles we usually associate with the back, lats and traps, but the muscles on the left are just as important, especially when it comes to spine and shoulder stability.

Pull ups are great for the lats, and dumbell rows are great for the lats and even the traps, but to really hit the rhomboids and teres muscles you need a movement that involves pulling both arms to the rear at the same time. You can't go wrong with the bent over row, but start light and get your form right. You can also use dumbells as long as you use both arms at the same time.

You can also add in some variations, like doing a row with a wider grip and pulling your arms more out to the side (kind of like flaring your arms in a bench press, but while pulling). This does a great job of hitting both the rear delts and the upper back and build a great base for bench pressing.

Do some research on how to strengthen/warm up your rotator cuffs, and do it religiously now, BEFORE you have problems.

Thanks for the tips. After looking at the back muscle pic, I realized I might have pulled my rhomboid. Will incorporate 2 variations of rows to my routine, for now replacing some shoulder sensitive moves like the DB flyes.

Been researching shoulder related muscles and it (Rhomboid) seem to be an oft forgotten muscle. From the info I've gathered, it is best activated by row variations which squeezes the shoulder blades together or the face pull Craig mentioned. I'll try a DB variation lying face down on a bench.

Btw Craig, I was thinking the YTI Excersise would be good as a light warm up for my rotator cuff muscles. usually I've only done push-ups...